OT Printer

MUCH better

Interesting. Thanks.

Bert

If you only print small amounts then almost any printer will do. If you only want B&W then a laser printer is much more likely to work after a long period of disuse. Inkjets used infrequently clog up the heads and drink copious amounts of ink cleaning them again.

That said modern inkjets are pretty good for domestic use and there are some pretty good deals on combined scan/print/copy devices.

If you don't mind industrial ugly physically big then end of line printers can be had from the likes of Morgan Computers. Built to last rather than the cheap tat sold insupermarkets.

I have a Samsung ML2550 mono duplex and a Dell 1320cn colour that way. I chose them for having cheap aftermarket toner available (Samsung is a bit more expensive in that respect since the drum gets swapped too).

In its day the Dell was capable of photoreal output quality but things have moved on since then. Even so some industrial colour printers have dire colour photograph reproduction so are easily beaten by an inkjet.

That is all down to whose toner you buy and how you set up the color curves.

I have an OKI all-in-one, A4 but does FAX as well, duplex copying is worth it for the entertainment value! About the same price and 'just works' whenever you want to print.

Quite the opposite, laser colour printing is good for posters, letterheads etc. but can't match inkjet for photo printing. This is true for 'domestic' priced ones anyway, I guess if you spend thousands of pounds on a colour laser printer you might get photo quality printing.

I have a tiny B&W Samsung laser that is so small it sits on a shelf in the hall. Quality is excellent - and it is all of about 6"x6" x 14-16" wide.

I have one of these cheap Ricohs a punt. Basically, a bit s*it. Pain to set up using supplied disk and heaven help you if you lose the disk. Unlike every other printer I've owned I've had no luck with downloading working drivers.

I would spend a bit more on a Brother.

Tim

My problem with it was that I had the Ricoh disc, but the laptop didn't have an optical disc drive. I got the driver installed eventually, but only on one of the two USB ports!

I've had loads of HPs, an Oki, some Samsungs. None have caused the annoyance that the Ricoh has.

Incidentally, if anyone wants an HP LJ5, I have one looking for a new home. It would need to be collected from N London. One careful owner since new. It needs a new toner cartridge but is otherwise fine. I fitted a new fuser unit, and it hasn't done all that many pages since then.

I have a colour Brother Laser and it is excellent. I can print from my smartphone, which is very useful for pictures. It always works for the last 3 years. My son has the older version and his is now about 6 years old without problems apart from having to buy the expensive Brother toner cartridges after 5 years!

Don't think that's as true as once was. Mine can go weeks with not being used, but is still fine.

My cheap Samsung laser is a pile of poo.

It happens that Mr Pounder Esquire formulated :

For that low level of printing a cheap laser printer would suit you much better. No wasted ink cleaning the head, no choking up. You can even get old office laser printers just for the cost of your collecting one - look on your local Freecycle.

Perhaps but some of the ones I have seen in multinational corporate organisations look like they were setup by someone who was colour blind!

It didn't look too bad on printing PPT presentations apart from the soot and whitewash and incredibly dark rendition of embedded images. I wouldn't put it past their IT department to have printer colour management completely mangled, applied twice or not at all. But my printer could run rings around them printing the same content.

I haven't found the toner to be a problem. I stuck with Dell OEM toner for a while (buying up cartridges secondhand from returned units with the print engine trashed by ham fisted installers). I even bought an entire spare printer to get 2 full sets of original Dell toner at one point. I now use decent grade third party cartridges with no real loss of quality - and still cheaper than refilling them myself! I save the empties in the loft to refill one day if it ever becomes worthwhile.

I have an A3 laser - bought 2nd hand, I tried every setting to get the colour balance correct. Then the Cyan toner ran out - so I bought genuine HP toner - problem gone.

In message , Martin Brown writes

My Dell C1765nf runs fine on non-oem toner, but it was given to me by the previous owner. He had a paper jam, which Dell said could not be cured without an uneconomic major dismantle. They replaced the printer foc, but he was not happy to take the risk of a recurrence. I'm careful with the paper.

It might be worth googling whatever printer is chosen + "paper jam".

My main worry with lasers is with the print media. I've had 2 antique Xerox P12 lasers, both bought for pennies. I ran some sort of coated paper through the first and it never worked again, hence bought the second one to use up the toner. I keep meaning to look up what can and can't be run through a laser printer.

I have had the duplex feed on the other printer jam more often, but taking one apart doesn't bother me all that much. DIY after all. A bit of care and low light to avoid trashing the photosensitive drum - most often long tweezers and a bit of brute force will get it out. (not necessarily in one piece)

Certainly some are more prone to jams than others. The more convoluted the paper path and thicker the paper the more likely it is to jam.

Typically they have a maximum permissible thickness I think mine is

Yup. Laser always wins for infrequent use - no head clogging, head cleaning and all that other nonsense.

I have not tried the Ricoh entry level machines, although their high end colour workgroup machines are very good (a favourite with Estate Agents and similar businesses to 30K pages/month)

The small brothers I have tried, and they are generally good as well.

Inkjets can. You just don't get long term reliability if you print infrequently. I guess it depends what you do but when I print I need it to work.

NT